Everett City Council To Vote On Final ReThink Housing Action Plan

It runs over 200 pages and has taken years to put together, but Wednesday night the Everett City Council is expected to adopt a final ReThink Housing Action Plan and submit it to the Washington State Department of Commerce. Here’s a brief overview of the housing situation in Everett taken from the plan.

The City is expected to grow to a population of 165,000 and an employment base of about 140,000 by 2035 presenting growth challenges given the city’s vacant land availability and access to a higher level of transportation infrastructure needed to accommodate the growth. According to the City’s Housing Needs Assessment produced in 2019, the future housing need will require an additional 22,777 new housing units for all income levels within the planning period. To meet the growth targets, average production levels would require about 1,500 new units per year.

While there have been a number of new housing developments in the past two years, the annual average housing production between 2011 and 2018 was 231 new units indicating housing production levels have not kept pace to meet the current and growing demand. Rental costs and home sales prices have risen causing many more renters to be cost-burdened while shutting out opportunities for homeownership and wealth building for many households. Over the next three years, Everett will begin planning for a new round of growth targets for the new planning period 2024-2044 establishing additional housing production pressures that may go beyond current zoning capacity.

Understanding this context, most new housing in Everett will be in multifamily development and smaller housing types other than single family homes in both the rental and homeownership markets. According to the US Census Bureau for the period 2015-2019, the average household size in Everett is 2.43, supporting the demand for smaller unit sizes. It is important to fully understand the barriers to housing so that effective solutions can be implemented. These solutions must also include addressing equity for Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and other marginalized community members.

The Rethink Housing Action Plan is an overall plan that includes recommended strategies and actions that will further align city policies, regulations, and funding resources to support housing development and opportunities now and into the future to meet housing needs for all.

You can click here to see the full plan.